One 77-year-old’s search for the truth: 9/11, election fraud, illegal wars, Wall Street criminality, a stolen nuke, the neocon wars, control of the U.S. government by global corporations, the unjustified assault on Social Security, media complicity, and the "Great Recession" about to become the second Great Depression. "The most important truths are hidden from us by the powerful few who strive to steal the American dream by keeping We the People in the dark."

The German Chancellery has accused NATO chief Philip M.
Breedlove of “dangerous propaganda”. The question: what to think about
this critique coming from a government that uses this kind of propaganda
technique itself. Jens Wernicke, media scientist and author of several
books, talked with the renowned Swiss peace researcher and NATO expert
Dr. Daniele Ganser.

Mr. Ganser, the German Chancellery accuses NATO chief Philip
M. Breedlove, of “dangerous propaganda”. Breedlove exaggerates Russia’s
military involvement in East Ukraine, for example. What is going on
here? Is the German government just accusing NATO of war propaganda?

The German Chancellery is right with its critique. In my opinion,
something dangerous is happening right now: US generals like
Breedlove are trying to provoke a war, where Germans and Russians would
kill each other in order to weaken both countries. This is a cynical,
actually a diabolical plan. But this is exactly what US strategist like
Georg Friedman, director of the Stratfor think tank, are suggesting.
United, Germany and Russia are the only power that could threaten the
US, Friedman said in a speech in February 2015 in Chicago.

“Our primordial interest [preventing a German-Russian alliance] is to ensure that will never happen,” said Friedman.

“The US, as an empire, cannot intervene in Eurasia all the time,” he
explained. Therefore they must turn countries against each other, so
they don’t build close alliances. “I suggest something President Ronald
Reagan used against Iraq and Iran: He supported both war parties!”
Freidman stated. The war between Iraq and Iran between 1980 and 1988
claimed at least 400.000 dead, so from the point of peace science it is
frightening what Friedman suggests. “So the Iranians and Iraqis fought
against each other and not against us,” explained Freidman in his
speech. “That was cynical and amoral. But it worked.”

The USA cannot occupy Eurasia. The same moment we put our boots on
European soil, we will be outnumbered due to demographics. In my opinion
the radical US generals like Breedlove are trying to implement this
strategy, where in future German and Russian Soldiers kill each other in
Ukraine, thus destabilizing and weakening the whole of East Europe.
That would be a catastrophe. Therefore a peace movement needs to
encourage an alternative solution, like the neutrality of Ukraine. No
NATO membership and friendship between Germany and Russia.

How is NATO trying to fuel this conflict?

NATO General Breedlove often sticks out by spreading exaggerated and
untrue claims. This is how NATO is fueling the war. This is dangerous,
because the situation is very tense, as we know. On the 12th of November
2014 Breedlove claimed that Russian toops and tanks have marched into
Ukraine! But that wasn’t true and it wasn’t just a little thing.
Literally the NATO general said: “We have seen that Russian troops,
Russian tanks, Russian artillery and air defense systems have moved into
Ukraine.” BBC and other mass media spread that worldwide but it was a
lie.

And US General Ben Hodges, commander of the US troops in Europe, also
pushes for war by supporting the Ukrainian army. In January 2015 he
visited a military hospital in Kiev and handed over a medal for bravery
of the US Army to a wounded Ukrainian soldier! That, of course,
increases tension.

However, the US General Hodges shows symbolically: The US is an
“active party of war” in the Ukraine. It stands by the Ukrainian army
that is fighting the Russian supported separatists in East Ukraine.
Because Germany is a NATO member, there is a danger that German soldiers
are dragged into this war by the US. Similar to Afghanistan after 2001.
If that happens, then we have exactly the situation Friedman is asking
for: Germans and Russians shooting at each other in the Ukraine. Of
course I hope that this won’t happen. However, a peace movement needs to
raise this and warn of such dangers in order to avoid them.

Is this a very common thing, I mean, that NATO lies, exaggerates or deceives?

Yes, regrettably NATO has, on a regular basis, combined lies and war. In my book NATO’s secret armies in Europe. Staged terror and clandestine warfare I
show how, during the Cold War, NATO had built in Western countries,
supported by CIA and the British secret service MI6, secret armies, of
which existence the governments and population didn’t know anything.

Especially the US generals are dangerous, because they have been
continuously fighting wars in different countries during the last 70
years. As representatives of an empire they are not only used to kill
but also to deceive. General Lyman Lemnitzer, for example, who served as
SACEUR of NATO (Supreme Allied Commander Europe) between 1963 and 1969,
so one of Breedlove’s predecessors, suggested in the 60s that the US
should stage a war against Cuba by destroying an American ship at the
military base in Guantanamo and by staging terror attacks in Washington,
and then for both crimes accuse Fidel Castro in order to get the
American public behind the war. John F. Kennedy, however, stopped the
operation [Northwoods]. But it shows, how dangerous the officers in the
Pentagon are.

Is only the US pushing for wars or are other countries also involved?

NATO has 28 members and unfortunately other NATO countries are
involved in war propaganda as well. For example, the Brits! In March
2003, before they attacked Iraq, Tony Blair, the then prime minister,
said: “Iraq is in possession of chemical and biological weapons. Its
rockets are ready for use within 45 minutes.” That was a lie! The attack
on Iraq by USA and Great Britain started, nevertheless, without an UN
mandate. So it was illegal!

It was also an illegal aggression when NATO, on the 24th of March
1999, started bombing Serbia. Because NATO didn’t have a mandate of the
UN Security Council. Back then it was Germany under the Chancellor
Gerhard Schröder, the Defense Minister Rudolph Scharping and the Foreign
Minister Joschka Fischer, that actively took part in the aggression
[War on Yugoslavia], together with the US. In the run-up to the
aggression lies were spread to get the people behind this war. Later, in
2014, Schröder admitted that NATO violated International Law. “When the
question came up how to deal with developments in Yugoslavia and Kosovo
respectively, we sent our planes, our Tornados [German warplanes] to
Serbia together with NATO and bombed a sovereign state without a
Security Council Resolution,” admitted Schröder self-critically.

How come that in those cases nobody raises its voice and we only read the same NATO statements with their arguments?

The mass media in Germany are pushing people into a direct
confrontation with Russia, in a way the radicals in the US, like
Stratfor director Friedman, are asking for. It means, they fuel
animosity towards Russia. And very rarely there is a critical discussion
about NATO or about the strategic interests of the US, those powers
that are fueling the war in Ukraine.

Many journalists don’t even call the US an empire fearing for their
jobs and other things. But it is apparent that the US is an empire of
our times, the most powerful nation that, of course, is pursuing its
national interests. This fact is rarely raised by the mass media. So
many people watching TV don’t even know the term ‚US Empire’ or the
strategic interests of this empire in Eurasia. Therefore, critical
people disappointed by the TV and Newspapers are trying to inform
themselves through alternative media on the Internet.

So, do you think the critique by our [German] government is a
sign that they finally try to break the global spiral of violence and
distance itself from propaganda in favour of respectful dialogue with
Russia? And, is our government more credible than NATO itself?

I am from Switzerland, which is not part of NATO. So I do look at
the German policy and Chancellor Merkel from the outside. And I see that
many people are concerned with the situation [war] in Ukraine, because
of its proximity. And most of the Germans that I know, they don’t want a
future, where German soldiers and Russian soldiers shoot at each other!
But I am not sure what the German government wants. They move in a
zigzag course. One day, as a NATO member, they fuel, together with the
US, the war in the Ukraine by increasing tensions with Russia. And
sometimes they try to keep the friendship or at least the respect with
Russia by publically criticizing NATO war-hawk Breedlove. So which line
will be predominant in future its hard to tell.

What is your assessment of the departure of the hawk Anders
Fogh Rasmussen as NATO General Secretary? Will Jens Stoltenberg
establish himself as a peaceful successor? To put it differently: How
much influence has a Secretary General actually on NATO policies?

If you study the history of NATO it is easy to notice that the post
of Secretary General is always staffed with an European, now
Stoltenberg, a Norwegian, and before that, Rasmussen, a Dane. But the
Europeans should not be mistaken as to who is calling the shots in NATO,
it is the US! Secretary General is not the most important post. It is
actually the one of the Supreme Allied Commander Europe, because here lies the military command. An American, now Breedlove, always holds this position.

Has Stoltenberg publically criticized Breedlove or tried to stop him?
No, he is not able to. His job as Secretary General is primarily to
give NATO an European face. This is better received in Europe, than
having a US diplomat appear all the time.

So I don’t believe that Stoltenberg is able or willing to transform
NATO into a peaceful organization. Also because of the track record of
NATO in the past two decades: NATO wars and the technique of, Regime
Change’ have left countries in ruins and traumatized people, in Libya,
in Iraq, in Afghanistan. So I hope that Ukraine won’t be put on this
list too!

What is Lithuania? To Washington it is a nothing.

Kristoferis Voiska runs an alternative Internet news site in
LIthuania. Not long ago he interviewed me, and the interview appeared in
both LIthuanian newspapers and on his Internet news program in video
form. I found him to be sincere and well informed. I advised him that
interviewing me would bring trouble for him, and he already was aware of
that.

As I have said so many times, Americans are the worst informed people on the planet. They are unaware of the growing momentum toward war with Russia. The
presstitute media throughout Europe, especially in the Baltic states and
Poland, is hard at work creating in people’s minds the fear of a
Russian invasion. The orchestrated fear then provides the basis for the
American puppet governments to beg troops and tanks and missiles from
Washington, and the US military/security complex, counting its profits,
is pleased to comply.

But what Russia sees is a threat, not a money-making opportunity for
the US military/security complex and payoffs to the corrupt Lithuanian
and Polish governments, which are increasingly perceived as neo-nazi
like the government that Washington bestowed on Ukraine.

The situation is dangerous, as I keep telling you, a message that some are too weak to accept.

If you care to show support for Kristoferis and the independent media
in Lithuania, send emails to him at: tautiniai.socialistai@yandex.ru

In about one week I will be 76 years old. I was born in 1939 as
World War II was unfolding as the direct consequence of the Versailles
Treaty that broke every promise President Woodrow Wilson made to Germany
in exchange for the end of World War I.

I remember as a child Cold War nuclear attack drills in elementary
school during which we would cower under our school desks. We were
issued dog tags with our blood type just like the dog tags ripped by
their comrades off US soldiers killed in the war movies by Germans or
Japs (no longer a permissible word) and sent home to the dead GI’s
family.

To us it was more romantic than scary. We loved wearing the dog
tags. I have no idea what happened to mine. They must be collectors’
items by now.

I have seen a lot. As kids playing war–in those days you could have
toy guns without being shot down by the police who are protecting us–we
reveled in America’s World War victories. We understood, thanks to our
parents and grandparents, that the Red Army won the war against Germany,
but we Americans beat the heartless Japs.

That was enough. We knew that the US was tough.

I was 14 when the Korean War broke out. We expected to win, of
course, and our expectations, we thought, were proven correct when
General MacArthur’s amphibious landings rolled up the North Korean
army. But what MacArthur and Washington had overlooked is that China
and the Soviet Union were not about to accept a US victory.

Before Americans could cheer, the Third World Chinese Army rolled in
and pushed the conqueror of Japan back town to the tip of South Korea.
It was a humiliating defeat for American arms. In his dispute with
President Truman about the conduct of the war, MacArthur, America’s most
famous general, was removed from command.

Washington accepted defeat in Korea and again in Viet Nam where a
500,000 US force consisting of US Army, Marines, and Special Forces was
defeated by a Third World guerrilla army.

To these defeats we can add Afghanistan and Iraq. After 14 years of
killing, the Taliban controls most of the country. Jihadist have carved
a new state out of parts of Syria and Iraq. The Middle East reeks of
American defeat. Just like Korea. Just like Viet Nam.

Despite these facts insouciant Americans and their crazed rulers in
Washington imagine that the US is a Uni-Power, the world’s only
superpower against whom no country can stand. Arrogance, ignorance, and
hubris are leading the US into conflict with Russia and China, either
of which can destroy the US with ease. And Europe as well. And the
stupid bought-and-paid-for Japanese government, a total non-entity, a
disgrace to the Japanese people, a collection of well-paid American
puppets.

The only conclusion that informed analysis supports is that
Washington is the greatest threat to life on earth. Washington is a
greater threat than global warming. Washington is a greater threat than
the exhaustion of mineral energy sources. Washington is a greater
threat than the rise in world and US poverty from Washington’s policy to
enrich the few at the expense of the many.

The only possible conclusion is that unless Washington collapses from
its economic house of cards or is abandoned by its NATO puppet states,
Washington will destroy life on earth.

Washington is the greatest evil that the world has ever faced. There is no good in Washington. Only evil.

How The US Government and US Military Became Murder, Inc.

Paul Craig Roberts

Andrew Cockburn has written a must-read book. The title is Kill
Chain: The Rise Of The High-Tech Assassins. The title could just as
well be: How the US Government and US Military Became Murder, Inc.

The US military no longer does war. It does assassinations, usually
of the wrong people. The main victims of the US assassination policy
are women, children, village elders, weddings, funerals, and
occasionally US soldiers mistaken for Taliban by US surveillance
operating with the visual acuity of the definition of legal blindness.

Cockburn tells the story of how the human element has been displaced
by remote control killing guided by misinterpretation of unclear images
on screens collected by surveillance drones and sensors thousands of
miles away. Cockburn shows that the “all-seeing” drone surveillance
system is an operational failure but is supported by defense contractors
because of its high profitability and by the military brass because
general officers, with the exception of General Paul Van Ripper, are
brainwashed in the belief that the revolution in military affairs means
that high-tech devices replace the human element. Cockburn demonstrates
that this belief is immune to all evidence to the contrary. The US
military has now reached the point that Secretary of Defense Hagel
deactivated both the A-10 close support fighter and the U-2 spy plane in
favor of the operationally failed unmanned Global Hawk System. With
the A-10 and U-2 went the last platforms for providing a human eye on
what is happening on the ground.

The surveillance/sensor technology cannot see human footprints in the
snow. Consequently, the drone technology concluded that a mountain top
was free of enemy and sent a detachment of unsuspecting SEALS to be
shot up. Still insisting no enemy present, a second group of SEALS were
sent to be shot up, and then a detachment of Army Rangers. Finally, an
A-10 pilot flew over the scene and reported the enemy’s presence in
force.

By 2012 even the US Air Force, which had been blindly committed to
the unmanned drone system, had experienced more failure than could any
longer be explained away. The Air Force admitted that the 50-year old
U-2 could fly higher and in bad weather and take better pictures than
the expensive Global Hawk System and declared the Global Hawk system
scrapped.

The decision was supported by the 2011 report from the Pentagon’s
test office that the drone system was “not operationally effective.”
Among its numerous drawbacks was its inability to carry out assigned
missions 75% of the time. The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff told
Congress that in addition to the system’s unacceptable failure rate,
the drone system “has fundamentally priced itself out of our ability to
afford it.”

As Cockburn reports: “It made no difference. Congress, led by House
Armed Services Committee Chairman Buck McKeon and Democratic Congressman
Jim Moran (whose northern Virginia district hosts the headquarters of
both Northrop and Raytheon) effortless brushed aside these pleas,
forcing the Air Force to keep buying the unwanted drone.”

Cockburn provides numerous examples of the utter failure of the
unmanned revolution ushered in by unrealistic dreamers, such as Andrew
Marshall, John Foster, William Perry, and David Deptula, who have done
much harm to the US military and American taxpayers. The failure stories
are legion and sad. Almost always the victims are the innocent going
about their everyday affairs.

The book opens with the story of three vehicles crammed with people
from the same village heading to Kabul. Some were students returning to
school in Kabul, some were shopkeepers heading to the capital to buy
supplies, others were unemployed men on their way to Iran seeking work,
and some were women bringing gifts for relatives. This collection of
ordinary people, represented on screens by vague images, was willfully
mistaken, as the reproduced conversations between drone operators and
assassins show, for a senior Taliban commander leading forces to attack a
US Special Forces patrol. The innocent civilians were blown to
smithereens.

The second chapter tells of the So Tri, an indigenous people in the
remote wilderness of southeastern Laos who were bombed for nine years
because the stupid American military sowed their environment with
sensors that called down bombs when human presence was detected.
High-tech warfare misidentified the villagers with Viet Cong moving
through jungle routes.

One heartbreaking story follows another. If surveillance suspects the
presence of a High Value Target in a restaurant, regardless of nominal
restrictions on the number of innocents who can be murdered as the
“collateral damage” part of the strike, the entire restaurant and all
within are destroyed by a hellfire missile. Remember that the Israelis
denounce terrorists for exploding suicide vests inside Israeli
restaurants. What the US military does is even worse.

On other occasions the US assassinates an underling of a High Value Target on the
assumption that the Target will attend the funeral which is obliterated from the air whether the Target is present or not.

As the murders are indiscriminate, the US military defines all males
killed to be valid targets. Generally, the US will not admit the deaths
of non-Targets, and some US officials have declared there to be no such
deaths. Blatant and obvious lies issue without shame in order to
protect the “operationally ineffective” and very expensive high-tech
production runs that mean billions of taxpayer dollars for the
military/security complex and comfortable 7-figure employment salaries
with contractors after retirement for the military brass.

When you read this book you will weep for your country ruled as it is
by completely immoral and inhumane monsters. But Cockburn’s book is
not without humor. He tells the story of Marine Lt. General Paul Van
Riper, the scourge of the Unmanned Revolution in Military affairs, who
repeatedly expressed contempt for the scientifically unsupported
theories of unmanned war. To humiliate Gen. Ripper with a defeat in a
massive war game as leader of the enemy Red force against the high-tech
American Blue force, he was called out of retirement to participate in a
war game stacked against him.

The Blue force armored with a massive database (Operational Net
Assessment) and overflowing with acronyms was almost instantly wiped out
by General Ripper. He sank the entire aircraft carrier fleet and the
entire Blue force army went down with it. The war was over. The 21st
century US high-tech, effects-based military was locked into a preset
vision and was beaten hands down by a maverick Marine general with
inferior forces.

The Joint Forces Command turned purple with rage. Gen. Ripper was
informed that the outcome of the war game was unacceptable and would not
stand. The sunken fleet magically re-floated, the dead army was
resurrected, and the war was again on, only this time restriction after
restriction was placed on the Red force. Ripper was not allowed to shoot
down the Blue force’s troop transports. Ripper was ordered to turn on
all of the Red force’s radars so that the Red forces could be easily
located and destroyed. Umpires ruled, despite the facts, that all of
Ripper’s missile strikes were intercepted. Victory was declared for
high-tech war. Ripper’s report on the total defeat of the Blue force,
its unwarranted resurrection, and the rigged outcome was promptly
classified so that no one could read it.

The highly profitable Revolution in Military Affairs had to be
protected at all costs along with the reputations of the incompetent
generals that comprise today’s high command.

The infantile behavior of the US military compelled to create a
victory for its high-tech, but legally blind, surveillance warfare
demonstrates how far removed from the ability to conduct real warfare
the US military is. What the US military has done in Afghanistan and
Iraq is to create far more enemies than it has killed. Every time
high-tech killing murders a village gathering, a wedding or funeral, or
villagers on the way to the capital, which is often, the US creates
hundreds more enemies. This is why after 14 years of killing in
Afghanistan, the Taliban now control most of the country. This is why
Islamist warriors have carved a new country out of Syria and Iraq
despite eight years of American sacrifice in Iraq estimated by Joseph
Stiglitz and Linda Bilmes to have cost Americans a minimum of $3
trillion. The total failure of the American way of war is obvious to
all, but the system rolls on autonomously.

The Revolution in Military Affairs has decapitated the US military,
which no longer has the knowledge or ability or human tools to conduct
war. If the crazed Russophobic US generals get their way and end up in
confrontation with Russia, the American forces will be destroyed. The
humiliation of this defeat will cause Washington to take the war
nuclear.

Crimeans Keep Saying No to Ukraine

March 22, 2015

Exclusive: In
a rare moment of honesty, a Western news outlet, Forbes, admits that
the people of Crimea expressed their legitimate will in last year’s
referendum when they voted to abandon Ukraine and rejoin Russia, an
inconvenient truth for the U.S. State Department and press corps, writes
Robert Parry.

A
central piece of the West’s false narrative on the Ukraine crisis has
been that Russian President Vladimir Putin “invaded” Crimea and then
staged a “sham” referendum purporting to show 96 percent support for
leaving Ukraine and rejoining Russia. More recently, Assistant Secretary
of State Victoria Nuland claimed that Putin has subjected Crimea to a
“reign of terror.”

Both elements have been part of the “group
think” that dominates U.S. political and media circles, but this
propagandistic storyline simply isn’t true, especially the part about
the Crimeans being subjugated by Russia.

Russian President Vladimir Putin addresses a crowd on
May 9, 2014,
celebrating the
69th anniversary of victory
over Nazi Germany and the
70th anniversary of the
liberation of the Crimean port city of
Sevastopol from the
Nazis. (Russian government photo)

Consistently, over the past year, polls conducted by major Western
firms have revealed that the people of Crimea by overwhelming numbers
prefer being part of Russia over Ukraine, an embarrassing
reality that Forbes business magazine has now acknowledged.

An article
by Kenneth Rapoza, a Forbes specialist on developing markets, cited
these polls as showing that the Crimeans do not want the United States
and the European Union to force them back into an unhappy marriage with
Ukraine. “The Crimeans are happy right where they are” with Russia,
Rapoza wrote.

“One year after the annexation of the Ukrainian
peninsula in the Black Sea, poll after poll shows that the locals there —
be they Ukrainians, ethnic Russians or Tartars are all in agreement:
life with Russia is better than life with Ukraine,” he wrote, adding
that “the bulk of humanity living on the Black Sea peninsula believe the
referendum to secede from Ukraine was legit.”

Rapoza noted that a June 2014 Gallup poll,
which was sponsored by the U.S. government’s Broadcasting Board of
Governors, found that 82.8 percent of Crimeans said the March 16
referendum on secession reflected the views of the Crimean people. In
the poll, when asked if joining Russia would improve their lives, 73.9
percent said yes and only 5.5 percent said no.

A February 2015 poll by German polling firm GfK found
similar results. When Crimeans were asked “do you endorse Russia’s
annexation of Crimea,” 93 percent gave a positive response, with 82
percent saying, “yes, definitely.” Only 2 percent said no, with the
remainder unsure or not answering.

In other words, the West’s
insistence that Russia must return Crimea to Ukraine would mean
violating the age-old U.S. principle of a people’s right of
self-determination. It would force the largely ethnic Russian population
of Crimea to submit to a Ukrainian government that many Crimeans view
as illegitimate, the result of a violent U.S.-backed coup on Feb. 22,
2014, that ousted elected President Viktor Yanukovych.

The coup
touched off a brutal civil war in which the right-wing regime in Kiev
dispatched neo-Nazi and other extremist militias to spearhead a fierce
“anti-terrorism operation” against resistance from the ethnic Russian
population in the east, which – like Crimea – had supported Yanukovych.
More than 6,000 Ukrainians, most of them ethnic Russians, have been
killed in the fighting.

Despite this reality, the mainstream U.S.
news media has misreported the crisis and distorted the facts to conform
to U.S. State Department propaganda. Thus, many Americans believe the
false narrative about Russian troops crushing the popular will of the
Crimean people, much as the U.S. public was misled about the Iraq
situation in 2002-03 by many of the same news outlets.

Or, as
Forbes’ Rapoza put it: “At some point, the West will have to recognize
Crimea’s right to self rule. Unless we are all to believe that the
locals polled by Gallup and GfK were done so with FSB bogey men standing
by with guns in their hands.” The FSB is a Russian intelligence agency.

The
GfK survey also found that Crimeans considered the Ukrainian media,
which has been wildly anti-Russian, unreliable. Only 1 percent said the
Ukrainian media “provides entirely truthful information” and only 4
percent said it was “more often truthful than deceitful.”So, the
people at the frontline of this conflict, where Assistant Secretary
Nuland, detected a “reign of terror,” say they are not only satisfied
with being restored to Russia, which controlled Crimea since the 1700s,
but don’t trust the distorted version of events that they see on
Ukrainian TV.

Practical Reasons

Some of the
reasons for the Crimean attitudes are simply pragmatic. Russian
pensions were three times larger than what the Ukrainian government paid
– and now the Ukrainian pensions are being slashed further in
compliance with austerity demands from the International Monetary Fund.

This
month, Nuland boasted about those pension cuts in praising the Kiev
regime’s steps toward becoming a “free-market state.” She also hailed
“reforms” that will force Ukrainians to work harder and into old age and
that slashed gas subsidies which helped the poor pay their heating
bills.

Last year, the New York Times and other U.S. news outlets
also tossed around the word “invasion” quite promiscuously in discussing
Crimea. But you may recall that you saw no images of Russian tanks
crashing into the Crimean peninsula or an amphibious landing or
paratroops descending from the skies. The reason was simple: Russian
troops were already in Crimea.

The Russians had a lease agreement
with Ukraine permitting up to 25,000 military personnel in Crimea to
protect the Russian naval base at Sevastopol. About 16,000 Russian
troops were on the ground when the Feb. 22, 2014 putsch occurred in Kiev
– and after a crisis meeting at the Kremlin, they were dispatched to
prevent the coup regime from imposing its control on Crimea’s people.

That
Russian intervention set the stage for the March 16 referendum in which
the voters of Crimea turned out in large numbers and voted
overwhelmingly for secession from Ukraine and reintegration with Russia,
a move that the Russian parliament and President Putin then approved.

Yet,
as another part of its false reporting, the New York Times claimed that
Putin denied that Russian troops had operated inside Crimea – when, in
fact, he was quite open about it. For instance, on March 4, 2014, almost
two weeks before the referendum, Putin discussed at a Moscow press conference the role of Russian troops in preventing the violence from spreading from Kiev to Crimea. Putin said:

“You
should note that, thank God, not a single gunshot has been fired there.
… Thus the tension in Crimea that was linked to the possibility of
using our Armed Forces simply died down and there was no need to use
them. The only thing we had to do, and we did it, was to enhance the
defense of our military facilities because they were constantly
receiving threats and we were aware of the armed nationalists moving in.
We did this, it was the right thing to do and very timely.”

Two
days after the referendum, which recorded the 96 percent vote in favor
of seceding from Ukraine and rejoining Russia, Putin returned to the
issue of Russian involvement in Crimea. In a formal speech to the Russian Federation, Putin justified Crimea’s desire to escape the grasp of the coup regime in Kiev, saying:

“Those
who opposed the [Feb. 22] coup were immediately threatened with
repression. Naturally, the first in line here was Crimea, the
Russian-speaking Crimea. In view of this, the residents of Crimea and
Sevastopol turned to Russia for help in defending their rights and
lives, in preventing the events that were unfolding and are still
underway in Kiev, Donetsk, Kharkov and other Ukrainian cities.

“Naturally,
we could not leave this plea unheeded; we could not abandon Crimea and
its residents in distress. This would have been betrayal on our part.”

But
to make it appear that Putin was denying a military intervention, the
Times and other U.S. news outlets truncated Putin’s statement when he
said, “Russia’s Armed Forces never entered Crimea.” The Western press
stopped there, ignoring what he said next: “they were there already in
line with an international agreement.”

Putin’s point was that
Russian troops based in Crimea took actions that diffused a possibly
violent situation and gave the people of Crimea a chance to express
their wishes through the ballot. But that version of events didn’t fit
with the desired narrative pushed by the U.S. State Department and the
New York Times. So the problem was solved by misrepresenting what Putin
said.

But the larger issue now is whether the Obama administration
and the European Union will insist on forcing the Crimean people –
against their will – to rejoin Ukraine, a country that is rapidly
sliding into the status of a failed state and a remarkably cruel one at
that.

----- o -----Investigative reporter Robert Parry broke many of
the Iran-Contra stories for The Associated Press and Newsweek in the
1980s. You can buy his latest book, America’s Stolen Narrative, either in print here or as an e-book (from Amazon and barnesandnoble.com).
You also can order Robert Parry’s trilogy on the Bush Family and its
connections to various right-wing operatives for only $34. The trilogy
includes America’s Stolen Narrative. For details on this offer, click here.

Top Russia Scholar Stephen Cohen: War between NATO and Russia a Real Possibility

Round
Table on "Defining a new security architecture for Europe that brings
Russia in from the cold" was held in Brussels on March 2.

The organizer of the event was the American committee for East West Accord.

Three
key presenters were American scholars Professor John Mearsheimer and
Professor Steve Cohen, and publisher-editor of The Nation, Katrina
Vanden Heuvel.

Q&A session was conducted by VIP guest panel
which included five Members of the European Parliament from Left, Center
and Right party groupings, two ambassadors and other senior diplomats
from several missions, a senior member of the EU External Action
Service, and Professor Richard Sakwa, author of the recently published
Frontline Ukraine.

Professor
Stephen Cohen is one of the most respected authorities on Russia among
American and Western scholars. He is an American scholar of Russian studies at Princeton University and New York University. His academic work concentrates on modern Russian history and Russia's relationship with the United States.

The key points of Cohen's extraordinary speech:

The possibility of premeditated war with Russia is real; this was never a possibility during Soviet times.

This
problem did not begin in November 2013 or in 2008, this problem began
in 1990's when the Clinton administration adopted a "winner-takes-all"
policy towards post-Soviet Russia.

Next to NATO expansion, the
US adopted a form of a negotiation policy called "selective cooperation"
- Russia gives, the US takes.

There is not a single example of
any major concession or reciprocal agreement that the US offered Russia
in return for what it has received since the 90s.

This policy has been pursued by every president and every US Congress, from President Clinton to President Obama.

The
US is entitled to a global sphere of influence, but Russia is not
entitled to any sphere of influence at all, not even in Georgia or
Ukraine.

For 20 years Russia was excluded from the European
security system. NATO expansion was a pivot of this security system and
it was directed against Russia.

Putin started as a pro-Western
leader, he wanted partnership with the US, provided helping hand after
9/11 and saved many American lives in Afghanistan.

In return he
got more NATO expansion and unilateral abolition of the existing missile
treaty on which all Russian security was based.

Putin is not an autocrat, he's maybe very authoritarian as an ultimate decider, but he is answerable to other power groups.

Putin
is not anti-Western, or as Khodorkovsky said, he is more European than
99 percent of Russians. He has become less pro-Western and particularly
less pro-American.

Since November 2013, Putin has became not
aggressive but reactive. For this he has been criticized in circles in
Moscow as an appeaser (that is, soft, not tough enough).

We
(opposing academics) don't have effective political support in the
administration, the Congress, political parties, think tanks or on
university campuses. This is unprecedented situation in American
politics. There's no discourse, no debate and this is failure of
American democracy.

There is ongoing extraordinary irrational
and nonfactual demonisation of Putin. No Soviet leader was so personally
vilified as Putin is now.

The solution is federation to unite
Ukraine without Crimea, which is not coming back, free trade with both
the West and Russia and no NATO membership for Ukraine.

This guarantees must be in writing, not oral premises like they gave to Gorbachev, and must be ratified by the UN.

The Kiev regime is not a democratic one, but an ultra-nationalistic one. Poroshenko is a diminishing president.

Unless
the Kiev regime changes its approach to Russia or unless the West stops
supporting Kiev unconditionally, we are drifting towards war with
Russia.

Europe Tilts East Towards China (1/2)Michael Hudson Report: Britain, Germany, France and Italy are among those who joined Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank in an expression of their discontent over World Bank polices that force developing countries to depend on the US - March 20, 2015

Michael Hudson is a Distinguished Research Professor of Economics at the University of Missouri, Kansas City. His two newest books are The Bubble and Beyond and Finance Capitalism and its Discontents. His upcoming book is titled Killing the Host: How Financial Parasites and Debt Bondage Destroy the Global Economy.

Global Shift in the Balance of Power Is Moving from West to East
Posted by Joachim Hagopian on March 19, 2015

A major recent event last week largely went unnoticed by both MSM and independent news sources alike.By Joachim Hagopian

The British are apparently jumping ship away from the US
dollar/petrodollar in an overt effort to align itself more closely with
the BRICS alliance as it seeks a new standard international currency.

For several years Russia, China, Brazil, India and South Africa
(BRICS) have been preparing the world for its transition from USD
standard international currency to its own alternative-in-the-making.
America’s so called mother country England has seen the writing on the
wall and knows the global balance of power is rapidly tilting in favor
of where the sun always rises in the emerging East.

The European central banking cabal from the City of London, a
separate and private political and financial entity apart from the rest
of both London and England, sent British royalty Prince William to China
to quietly sign a deal to become a founding member of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB).

This surprising new development is a clear indication that the royal
Bank of England is placing its financial bet and future on China and the
East as its rock solid anchor. Much of the world has been looking to
move away from and abandon the longtime global financial stronghold of
the US Federal Reserve, its World Bank and US dollar standard. A US official feebly chastised UK in the Financial Times:

We are wary about a trend toward constant accommodation of China, which is not the best way to engage a rising power.

More consternation arose when Germany, France and Italy
have additionally made overtures in the same direction. This worldwide
trend spells utter defeat for Obama and his disastrous foreign policy.

After Washington’s been exerting strong-armed pressure on Australia
as its key allied partner supporting its failing Asian pivot designed to
check China’s growing regional and global dominance in the Pacific
Asian market, Australia is now also looking to follow suit accepting and
embracing China’s lead.

According to international investor and entrepreneur Simon Black, the US is experiencing major economic blowback after two plus decades of aggression as the only global superpower:

… After years of endless wars, spying, debt,
money printing, bailouts, and insane regulations, the rest of the world
has had enough. And they’re looking for an alternative.

Enter the China led BRICS alliance and its New Development Bank and
now China’s other investment bank entry AIIB. Simon takes liberty in his
interpretation of Britain and Europe’s bold rebellion
after decades relegated to being a mere puppet of the US Empire: “Look,
you have $18.1 trillion in official debt, you have $42 trillion in
unfunded liabilities, and you’re kind of a dick. I’m dumping you.”

Perhaps some Americans may feel a bit betrayed and unsettled by our
longtime strongest global allies one by one seemingly abandoning the US
dollar and American Empire in its reckoning time of need.

If these geopolitical and
economic trends are examined beyond their face value though, the changes
occurring now may reflect much more significant, deeper changes than a
mere alteration of standard international currency (as impactful as that
will likely be for the US). These deep rooted fundamental changes have
everything to do with the major global shift now taking place where the
West’s ruling power elite itself is losing to the emerging global power rising in the East.

The latest act of bold economic defiance breaking rank with US Empire
interests mirrors last month’s bucking trend that Europe exercised when
putting the skids on the US campaign for sending heavy armaments to
Ukraine and pushing for war against Russia.

The fact is Europe and especially Germany depend on natural gas from Russia and the US imposed sanctions on Russia hurt Europe
even more than Russia. That along with wanting to avoid war in their
own backyard has nations like Germany and France softening their
hardline, US pushed anti-Russian posturing.

Several weeks ago German and French leaders attended meetings in
Mink, Belarus to negotiate a peaceful way out of the escalating violence
in Eastern Ukraine between the government forces in Kiev and the ethnic
Russian separatists seeking autonomy in the Donetsk and Lugansk region.

In the same way Netanyahu attempted to fan the war flames against
Iran, the same day Germany and France were gathering in Minsk to meet
with Putin and Ukraine leaders, Secretary of State Kerry showed up in Kiev
mouthing the same worn out lie of “Russian aggression” in a transparent
feeble attempt to sabotage the Minsk talks. Again, the tie-in is the
Israeli-US crime cabal constantly at work every chance they get peddling
and promoting more global violence, death and war.

But in a rare gesture of independence, unwilling to start a war so
close to home against nuclear powered Russia that Europe relies heavily
as a critical source for its natural gas consumption, the powers of
Europe are seeking a non-violent resolution to its regional conflict
that carries the devastating potential of triggering World War III.

Meanwhile, NATO Supreme Commander US Air Force General Philip Breedlove
fashions himself to be a Dr. Strangelove incarnate, making repeated
bogus claims and lies of Russian army presence inside Eastern Ukraine in
a vain yet persistent attempt to foment war. Having such a deluded and
deceitful warmonger in charge of the NATO nuclear arsenal poses a
calamitous threat to the entire world.

Yet his commander-in-chief Obama has chosen not to relieve him of command. Instead German leaders have openly criticized Breedlove and the European Union wants to replace NATO
with its own continental army. This very public geopolitical conflict
over such widely differing Western approaches toward Ukraine seriously
undermine American Empire’s global influence and power, again
underscoring simultaneous developments around the world that indicate
consistent across the boards US foreign policy failures and from the
broader context, a rapid US decline as the sole global hegemonic
superpower.

The war has been provoked to destroy the Russian
World, to draw Europe into it, and to surround Russia with hostile
countries. Unleashing this world war, America is trying to deal with its
own internal problems.

Current economic turmoil reverberating in Japan
is in large part due to the notorious corruption of the Abe government
that may soon have additional problems to contend with once accusations
over a fraudulent past elections get fully exposed.

Abe has been a subservient tool used by the same international crime
syndicate controlled by subversive Israeli-American forces. As such,
Japan will also be moving away from the USD/West geopolitics and very
likely pivoting toward China and a Pacific alliance that excludes the US
Empire finding itself increasingly isolated on the outs.

Though incumbent Prime Minister Netanyahu is the apparent winner in
today’s Israeli election, the despot had to claw and fight for his
political life to survive another day. Recent revelations that he’s been
a Russian spy surfaced right after his disgraceful debacle in front of
the Israeli captured US congressional audience on Capitol Hill two weeks
ago and then came the despicable treasonous display of 47 Republican senators threatening letter to Iran.

Bibi’s days of hate, war and
paranoia are numbered as the ugly truth about his evildoing will
continue to unfold that will soon bring him down. Showing his true evil
colors right to the end, the day before the election Netanyahu once
again reminded the world that an autonomous Palestinian state will never come to pass while on his watch.

Within the last couple weeks other mysterious events suggesting some
cataclysmic, behind-the-scenes development included the apparent disappearance of Vladimir Putin
for 11 consecutive days, fueling speculation from an internal political
coup to possible sickness and/or death to witnessing the birth of his
child at the bedside of his girlfriend in Switzerland.

Because so many monumental breaking stories and developments seem to
abound every week, Putin’s normally high profile lifestyle would
naturally generate even higher profile speculation over his abrupt,
extended disappearance. Of course it begs the question asking if it’s
merely coincidental with these other earth-shaking events or very much
related.

For years the CIA and US Empire have been hard at work in nations
from Eastern Europe through the Caucasus to Central Asia all the way to
China courting the favor of corrupt dictators and supporting coups
promoting anti-Russo-Sino US puppet governments along the entire
corridor bordering Russia and China. Despite such Obama’s plan after the
2008 Russian-Georgia conflict was to a reset relations with Russia.

But with last year’s US-induced Ukrainian coup and Russia’s
annexation by consensual vote of Crimea that “reset” plan went out the
window. In 2011 Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan signed the economic
alliance of the Eurasian Union.
Meanwhile, recognizing the strategic importance of the land bridge
between Europe, the Middle East and Asia, Putin has made inroads strengthening ties with the three South Caucasus nations.

Putin enticed Armenia to also join the Eurasian Union and has
mediated hostilities between Armenia and oil rich Azerbaijan while
seeking to repair and realign with Georgia that previously leaned toward
the West. US Empire has largely failed to gain a foothold in this part
of the world.

Other key geopolitical developments that have been ongoing for some time center in such remote places as western China’s mineral and oil-rich Xinjiang Province.
With the powerful US Navy patrolling and to a great extent controlling
Pacific waters in conjunction with Obama’s flop of an Asian Pacific
pivot, the geopolitics chessboard strategy to hem the two adversarial
giants in with hostile neighbors has generally backfired.

Furthermore, the US was not prepared for Russia and China to suddenly
renew an ultra-close economic, political and military bond that would
effectively counter US Empire’s hegemonic aggression. They promptly
signed a $400 billion oil-gas pipeline deal that will span a landlocked pathway, thereby foiling the US plan to seal off the China’s energy access via the Pacific.

Hence, Moslem populated Xinjiang Province that is the proposed
pipeline passage route has become a highly contentious target where the
West and CIA in particular have been funding and supporting a separatist
movement and acts of terrorism as a disruptive interdiction tactic.
Overall this covert strategy has failed.

The Western cabal controlled crime syndicate
led by the likes of kingpin Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu
financed and supported by the likes of multibillionaire Sheldon Adelson
and the Saudi royal family along with congressional henchman and ISIS
friend Senator John McCain and the rest of his treasonous Republicans,
the rogue US intelligence agency the CIA and NATO’s General Breedlove
are all bent on plunging the US Empire-NATO forces into World War III on
multiple warfronts at every global hotspot – Ukraine, Syria, Iran, the
Caucasus all the way eastward to China’s Xinjiang Province and northward
to the oil-rich Arctic against the forces of the two most powerful
nations of the East – Russia and China.

As a desperate last ditch attempt to retain its many centuries of
Rothschild-Rockefeller power and dominance, these evil-minded,
megalomaniacal psychopaths know that their hitherto unchallenged global
control and strength that have bankrupted and nearly destroyed the
planet is fast slipping away. So they seem all the more erratically
resolute in seeking revenge by taking the entire earth down with them.

The truth about the horror and destruction these Western oligarchs
have conspired and caused worldwide for centuries cannot even be
fathomed. They have ensured a permanent state of war (in the US alone 93% of its 239 years)
right up to the present Bush crime family-neocon fabrication of the
“war on terror,” then under Obama this last year alone wrongly plunging
America into another dangerous cold war with Putin’s Russia, and dozens
of tragic false flag events like 9/11 designed to demonize Moslems into becoming the instantaneous post-Communist designated enemy of the twenty-first century with the US-Saudi-Israeli creation of al Qaeda/ISIS.
These dark malevolent forces of evil that have propagated so much
misery and suffering on humanity for so long are finally at last being
exposed like never before.

The Western oligarch agenda to inflict a globalized system of absolute totalitarian fascist police state NWO control
on every nation and people on earth trapped in hopeless debtor bondage
may just be running into a brick Eastern wall as clear losers in the
ongoing economic/currency war.

Despite the constant jabbing of Putin and his Russian bear in vain
attempts to manipulate him to react with military force in eastern
Ukraine and despite the failed overt assault in the form of US Empire’s
Asian pivot designed to close in and isolate China from the rest of
Pacific Asia, ironically it’s the United States that finds itself
increasingly alone as the longtime global village bully that’s finally
met its match about to get its comeuppance.

The smarter, economically stronger forces emerging from the East are
winning the power war potentially without even firing a single shot
against Western oppressors. Hopefully peace will prevail and the
international crime syndicate that has long controlled the West will be
deposed of as the murderous traitors to both peace and humankind.

As a necessary qualifier, actual real life tends toward shades of
gray far more than black and white. Undoubtedly elements of corruption
and evil lurk behind all the most powerful nations in both the West and
the East. But the forces of China and Russia appear to be seeking a far
more rational, humane and even peaceful resolution to the
West-instigated West vs. East geopolitical military showdown sinisterly
orchestrated by the international crime cabal’s global agenda of
polarization, militarization, privatization and unsustainable,
insurmountable debt-driven feudalism based on pure theft, deception,
exploitation, impoverishment and pervasive planetary destruction.

Seeking to avoid the inevitable bloodbath that would result from
world war and possible nuclear annihilation of all life forms on earth,
the East appears to be seeking to avert such global disaster by ensuring
that this ongoing war is won by successfully transitioning to an
international currency backed once again by the gold standard.

The Western central banking cabal consisting of the Bank of England
and other European central banks, America’s Federal Reserve Board, its
World Bank and International Monetary Fund along with the Israeli-US
government crime cabal all stand to ultimately be stripped of their
absolute power that have the entire world drowning in debt, crushing
destabilization and impoverished despair. But now a light at the end of
the tunnel at least is shining a little brighter.

Something Strange Is Going On With Nonfarm Payrolls

Let's start with the basics: why is there a majority consensus that the
Fed will hike rates after it removes its "patient" language tomorrow?
One simple reason: non-farm payrolls. As reported earlier in the month,
following the report of March's expectations smashing 295,000 jobs
added, there have now been a 13 consecutive months of 200K+ payroll
months...

... something which together with the 5.5% unemployment rate, is for
the Fed is a clear indication that the slack in the labor is about to
disappear and wages are set to surge. Sadly, as we showed before, wages are not only not rising, but for 80% of the population they are once again sliding.

Falling wages aside (a critical topic as it singlehandedly refutes the Fed's bedrock thesis of no slack in a labor force
in which there are 93 million Americans who no longer participate in
the job market) going back to the original topic of which economic
factors are prompting the Fed to assume there is an economic recovery,
without exaggeration, all alone.

Is there nothing else that can validate the Fed's rate hike hypothesis? Well... no.

Below is a selection of the economic data points that have missed expectations in just the past month.

MISSES

Personal Spending

Construction Spending

ISM New York

Factory Orders

Ward's Domestic Vehicle Sales

ADP Employment

Challenger Job Cuts

Initial Jobless Claims

Nonfarm Productivity

Trade Balance

Lab

Unemployment Rate

or Market Conditions Index

NFIB Small Business Optimism

Wholesale Inventories

Wholesale Sales

IBD Economic Optimism

Mortgage Apps

Retail Sales

Bloomberg Consumer Comfort

Business Inventories

UMich Consumer Sentiment

Empire Manufacturing

NAHB Homebuilder Confidence

Housing Starts

Building Permits

PPI

Industrial Production

Capacity Utilization

Manufacturing Production

Dallas Fed

Chicago Fed NAI

Existing Home Sales

Consumer Confidence

Richmond Fed

Personal Consumption

ISM Milwaukee

Chicago PMI

Pending Home Sales

Personal Income

Personal Spending

Construction Spending

ISM Manufacturing

Atlanta Fed GDPNow

So a pattern emerges: we have an economy in which jobs and only jobs are
acting as if there is a strong recovery, while everything else is
sliding, disappointing economists, and in fact hinting at another
contraction (whatever you do, don't look at the Fed's internal model of Q1 GDP).

To be sure, economists these days are better known as weathermen, and
so they are quick to blame every economic disappointment on the
weather. Because, you see, they were unaware it was snowing outside when
they provided their forecasts about the future, a future which should
be impacted by the snowfall that day, and which they promptly scapegoat
as the reason for their cluelessness. Yet one wonders: why didn't the
harsh snow (in the winter) pound February jobs as well? Recall last
year's payroll disappointments were immediately blamed on the weather
which was just as "harsh" as this year. Why the difference?

And yet, today this rising "anomaly" between Nonfarm Payolls "data"
and everything else, hit a crescendo, and some - such as Jim Bianco -
have had it with the lies anomalies, which prompted him to ask the following:

Why Are Construction Jobs and Housing Starts Telling Different Stories? Is The Problem Non-Farm Payrolls

Housing starts slumped in February by the most in four years as bad
winter weather in parts of the U.S. prevented builders from initiating
new projects. Work began on 897,000 houses at an annualized rate, down
17 percent from January and the fewest in a year, the Commerce
Department reported Tuesday in Washington. The median estimate of 80
economists surveyed by Bloomberg called for 1.04 million. “It was just
the weather, basically,” said Richard Moody, chief economist at Regions
Financial Corp. in Birmingham, Alabama. Still, “my view of the recovery
in single-family housing is that it’s coming more gradually than others
think.”

Comment

The red line above shows seasonally adjusted housing starts
for February plunged by one of the largest amounts in the post-crisis
period.

The chart below shows a subset of the February non-farm payroll report, residential construction jobs. Seasonally
adjusted these jobs increased by 17,200 in February, the most in two
years (Feb 2013 was greater) and the second most in four years.

The vast majority of residential construction jobs are due to new housing starts. Existing housing does not create a lot of construction jobs. So
while economists are blaming the weather for the plunge in housing
starts, residential construction jobs were fairly robust in February.
This makes no sense.

Could remodeling have accounted for this discrepancy? Was there a big rush to redo kitchens in February?
In Home Depot’s February 24 investor conference call, they made no
mention of an unusual or a big increase in remodeling. Remodeling is so
important to Home Depot that they partnered with Harvard University to
create an economic series to help track sales (noted in the conference call).

If remodeling was not responsible for this discrepancy, we are left
with a theme we have brought up on multiple occasions over the past few
weeks. Payrolls data continues to paint a rosy picture of the economy while the rest of the economic data is doing quite the opposite.

Economists seem to start with the premise that the non-farm payroll
data is correct and everything else needs to be dismissed by weather and
other factors. Maybe we should ask why the non-farm payrolls number is different from everything else.

* * *Here is another way of seeing the above "anomaly":

So, instead of asking why everything else is showing an abnormal - and
rapid - slowdown in the US economy (and blaming everything on snow) is
it about time that everyone - the Fed included - finally asks: just what is going on with the "data" that is reported every month by the Bureau of Labor Statistics?

About Me

B.S. in Physics, Carnegie-Mellon University, 1960 Ph.D. in Physics, Brown University, 1966. Fellow, American Physical
Society. Fellow, American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Fellow, American Ceramic Society. Member, Geological Society of America, Research Physicist at Naval Research Laboratory (NRL), Washington, DC,
1967-2001. Fulbright-García Robles Fellow at Universidad Nacional
Autónoma de México, 1997. Invited Professor of Research at Universités
de Paris-6 & 7, Lyon-1, et St-Etienne (France) and Tokyo Institute
of Technology, 2000-2004. Adjunct Professor of Materials Science and
Engineering, University of Arizona, 2004-2005. Consultancy: impactGlass
research international, 2005-present.
Winner, one national and two international research awards and honored
by Brown University with a "Distinguished Graduate School Alumnus
Award." Author, 198 papers in peer-reviewed journals and books, Principal Author of 114 of these.